The Human Mind By Monttaigne

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Recommended: Mind and body relationship

The human mind is something so fascinating and intricate that not one person on this Earth knows exactly how to work around it. Thoughts and ideas are constantly flowing through a person’s brain day and night. All of those thoughts and ideas come from one’s imagination which could be one’s most powerful tool. A person’s imagination can bring about new concepts, different perspectives, challenging scenarios, or even a funny moment. Just like Montaigne, I am completely overwhelmed with the imagination. To begin, Montaigne opens his essay with a story about a man who was rather ill and said his only cure was to focus on Montaigne’s youth and vitality (37). Before Montaigne goes into further detail with that story, he mentions something about …show more content…

Towards the end of his essay, he writes about the story of the woman who believed she actually devoured a pin while eating some bread (45). The woman had not actually consumed the pin at all, but when she was told to vomit, a man threw a bent pin into her vomit and she believed she was cured just at the sight of that pin. “Believing that she had thrown up the pin, the woman was immediately relieved of her pain.” (45, lines 10-12) Why is it that we are satisfied with open ended thoughts or questions upon the sight of our “answer?” The woman had not actually ingested a pin, but as soon as she saw it she knew she was saved. Moments before, this woman had unbearable pain that was eating away at her and now suddenly that pain is gone simply because she saw a pin in her vomit. “But all this may be attributed to the close connexion between the mind and the body, whose fortunes affect one another.” (45) When reading this quote from Montaigne, a thought came to mind: we believe what we need to believe. Why is that? Why must we have to have answers to all of life’s questions? Yes, curiosity killed the cat, but our minds need that “brain food” to function. We need those deep, open ended thoughts to push us to create different thoughts that could lead to the answers we think we so desperately need. As I near the end of my essay, I have come to the conclusion that by writing about Montaigne’s words, it has expanded my mind to other questions. The human brain is a place I honestly don’t ever want to try to understand, but it poses an interesting topic. The human imagination can make us feel, think, create, and question things that can sometimes leave us feeling empty, but isn’t that the beauty of our minds? Our minds are so extremely powerful; our minds make us

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